Examining the most promising model for the Church of God Galactic, Bainbridge makes the following recommendation:

?Today there exists one highly effective religion actually derived from science fiction, one which fits all the known sociological requirements for a successful Church of God Galactic. I refer, of course, to Scientology.?
- "Religions for a Galactic Civilization"

Indeed, Scientology meets all the prerequisites for Bainbridge's Church of God Galactic, one of which being the cult's origins with science fiction. Carl Raschke explains:

?L. Ron Hubbard, architect of the controversial religion known as Scientology, openly and consciously decided to convert his science fiction work into a working belief system upon which a "church" was set up.? (303)

As a derivation of science fiction, Scientology inherited a central feature of the genre: Darwinism. In Dianetics, Scientologist high priest L. Ron Hubbard reveals the movement's adherence to evolutionary thought:

?It is fairly well accepted in these times that life in all forms evolved from the basic building blocks: the virus and the cell. Its only relevance to Dianetics is that such a proposition works--and actually that is all we ask of Dianetics. There is no point to writing here a vast tome on biology and evolution. We can add some chapters to those things, but Charles Darwin did his job well and the fundamental principles of evolution can be found in his and other works. The proposition on which Dianetics was originally entered was evolution.? (69; emphasis added)

Darwinian thought is especially evident in Scientology's preoccupation with survival. In Dianetics, Hubbard opines: "The dynamic principle of existence is survival" (52). In this statement, one can discern echoes of the Darwinian mantra: "Survival of the fittest." Hubbard proceeds to enumerate four dynamics of survival. It is within the fourth dynamic that the astute reader will recognize Darwinism's corresponding religion of self-deification: "Dynamic four is the thrust toward potential immortality of mankind as a species"(53; emphasis added). Of course, immortality is a trait reserved only for gods. Again, the religious theme of man's evolutionary ascent towards apotheosis becomes evident.

Eventually, Hubbard's church of Scientology "suffered religious schisms which spawned other cults" (Bainbridge, "Religions for a Galactic Civilization). One of the resulting sects was the Process Church of Final Judgement, a satanic cult that was the subject of a five-year ethnographic study conducted by Bainbridge ("Social Construction from Within: Satan's Process"). Enamored with the group, Bainbridge praised the Process Church as a "remarkably aesthetic and intelligent alternative to conventional religion" ("Social Construction from Within: Satan's Process").

A deeper examination of this scientistic cult reveals that its adherents probably retained much of the Darwinian thought intrinsic to its progenitor, Scientology. One case in point is the theology of the group's founder, Robert de Grimston. Bainbridge delineates this theology:

?Robert de Grimston's theology was Hegelianism in the extreme. For every thesis (Christ, Jehovah) there was an antithesis (Satan, Lucifer), and the cult aimed to achieve a final synthesis of all these dichotomies in the rebirth of GOD. Indeed, one way of explaining the failure of The Process is to note that it promised a Heaven on earth to members, yet it delivered something less.?
- "Social Construction from Within: Satan's Process"

Like Processean theology, Darwinian evolution also exhibits an inherently Hegelian framework. The organism (thesis) comes into conflict with nature (antithesis) resulting in a newly enhanced species (synthesis), the culmination of the evolutionary process (Marrs, Circle of Intrigue, 127). A similar dialectical framework was distilled in an allegorical form by H.G. Wells, a Freemason and prot?g? of Darwinian apologist T.H. Huxley. W. Warren Wagar elaborates:

?In the symbolic prologue to The Undying Fire, he [Wells] even likened the opposition of essence and existence to the interplay of good and evil. God was here represented as the inscrutable creator, who created things perfect and exact, only to allow the intrusion of a marginal inexactness in things through the intervention of Satan. God corrected the marginal uniqueness by creation at a higher level, and Satan upset the equilibrium all over again. Satan's intervention permitted evolution, but the ultimate purpose of God was by implication a perfect and finished and evolved absolute unity.? (104-05)

The Processeans shared Wells' notion of Satan, which portrayed the Devil as a necessary element of instability:

?For Processeans, Satan was no crude beast but an intellectual principle by which God could be unfolded into several parts, accomplishing the repaganization of religion and the remystification of the world.?
- Bainbridge, "Social Construction from Within: Satan's Process"

This portrait of an ongoing dialectical conflict echoes the Masonic dictum: Ordo Ab Chao (Latin for Order out of Chaos). The dialectical process underpins evolution, which began with the Masonic doctrine of "becoming." The final goal of a repaganized world synchronizes very well with Freemasonic occultism. All comprise the new religious consciousness being promulgated by science fiction. This is the future that the masses are being conditioned to accept by sci-fi predictive programming.

In Religion and the Social Order, Bainbridge presented the following mandate:

?It is time to move beyond mere observation of scientistic cults and use the knowledge we have gained of recruitment strategies, cultural innovation, and social needs to create better religions than the world currently possesses. At the very least, unobtrusive observation must be supplemented by active experimentation. Religions are human creations. Our society quite consciously tries to improve every other kind of social institution, why not religion? Members of The Process, founded mainly by students from an architecture school, referred to the creation of their cult as religious engineering, the conscious, systematic, skilled creation of a new religion. I propose that we become religious engineers.?

To understand what sort of faith is being sculpted by the technocratic "religious engineers," one need only look to Scientology and the Process Church. Both of these scientistic cults, awash in Darwinism and its corresponding humanist-Masonic religion of apotheosized Man, are microcosms for an emergent one-world religion.